The new film Women Talking, now showing at the Toronto International Film Festival after a premiere in Telluride, is about an extreme circumstance. A community of isolated, illiterate and devout Mennonite women are prosecuting a shocking crime: many of them have been systematically drugged and raped by men from their neighborhood. The perpetrators were taken to jail, the other men followed them with bail money. Meanwhile, the women are considering a set of options. Do they stay and forgive? Do they reject forgiveness and therefore face banishment? or fight?
These are huge questions and they may seem, at first glance, too specific and absolute to apply to the outside world. But author Miriam Toews and now filmmaker Sarah Polley, who directs this adaptation of Toews' novel (which was inspired by an actual mass rape in a Mennonite enclave in Bolivia), clearly expresses what is so terrifying and universally relevant about what that these women are debating.
Director: Sarah Polley
Writers: Sarah Polley, Miriam Toews
Stars:Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley
Women Talking is staged as a kind of Socratic dialogue, dense with puzzles particular to these women and with more general philosophical and social relevance. The central question of the text is what is tolerable, what is reparable and what deserves only the productive revolution of abandonment. The fundamental urgency of his research feels refreshingly direct, even radical. Hence the forceful title, so vast in its simplicity.
After a community-wide vote that resulted in a deadlock, a smaller group of women gathered in a haystack to make a decision for the community. They represent a few esteemed families of the colony. Agata Friesen (Judith Ivey) is there with her daughters Ona (Rooney Mara) and Salomé (Claire Foy), and Greta Loewen is accompanied by her daughters Mariche (Jessie Buckley) and Mejal. Some younger women, girls really, granddaughters of Agata and Greta, are also present, listening as their mothers, aunts and grandmothers vigorously debate an important next step.
Polley calmly films this as if it were a play, interrupting the process from time to time for a bit of film music or montage. However, Polley's main interest seems to be in acting her out, as she was once a seductive actress herself. For much of Women Speaking, this approach works well. The actors nimbly handle both the old-fashioned formality of the dialogue and the waves of anger and loss from the script with surprising clarity and mettle. Foy painfully illustrates Salome's stroke over what was done to her daughter. Mara manages a melancholic and dreamy restraint that cannot hide the sadness that has taken over Ona's life. Buckley lashes out authoritatively in confusion and fury. McCarthy, as a severely damaged old man and guilt-ridden father, evokes generations of unspoken violations.
Sometimes, however, the film's delicate rhythm is interrupted by a monologue or punctual reflections that seem to be aimed directly at the camera for the audience's instructive benefit. Polley admirably allows her excellent performers ample room to bring Talking Women to life. But there are also the larger needs of the film to consider: Sometimes Polley's acting generosity comes at a cost, when the film turns scenic for a minute and we break out of the enveloping spell of it.
Also distracting is Polley's choice to wash the film with a muddy, desaturated paleness. Of course, these ghastly affairs need not be, and probably should not be, cloaked in diluting, false beauty. However, a certain liveliness may have helped embolden the film's conversation, giving it a more palpable presence.
Even with that boring aesthetic, the movie feels poignant. There is a believable tension between those who see leaving as a life-changing loss and those who think staying is essentially fatal. There is also a gray area in the middle, which Women Talking deciphers as it patiently listens to all sides and then gradually synthesizes these many ideas and opinions into a kind of communal agreement. A decision is made, which the film frames as probably the correct one. And yet, the other options are still present in that understanding. A perfect choice could not be arrived at here, because these women have been denied the full breadth of autonomy in this cloistered world ordered by and for men.
Watch Women Talking 2022 Movie Trailer
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